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Synesthesia | The Sound of Color and More

What is the flavor of an E flat? What is the sound of white? What if we lived in a world where sights had sounds and feelings where interchangeable? According to professor Daphne Maurer of McMaster University, we once lived in such a world. Today, however, only 1% of all adults still have such abilities like knowing the sound of color or Chromesthesia (Color Synesthesia).

“Toddlers perceive higher pitched sounds to come from white balls and lower pitched sounds to come from black balls, just like adults with synesthesia,” explains Maurer. “With development, the connections underlying synesthesia are inhibited in most individuals.”

Called “Synesthesia”, it is a neurological condition where the stimulus of one cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway. There are many different phenomenon that have been covered with this term, perhaps as many as there are combination of senses. Defining synesthesia in an individual is difficult, and the majority of synesthetes are completely unaware that their experiences have a name. However, despite the differences between individuals, there are a few common elements that define a true synesthetic experience.

It is involuntary and automatic

The perceptions often have a sense of location

They are consistent and generic

The experience is highly memorable and in most cases pleasurable

They are loaded with affect.

Researchers using X as the inducer and Y as the concurrent, or additional experience, identify various forms of Synesthesia. Some of them take a little explaining.

Grapheme → color synesthesia

Is one of the most common forms of synesthesia, where individual letters of the alphabet and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes), are “shaded” or “tinged” with a

Spatial Sequence Synesthesia

A special form of the condition, in which people tend to see all numerical sequences they come across as points in space. For instance, the number 1 might be farther away and the number 2 might be closer. A new study shows that those with SSS have superior memories. They were able to recall past events and memories far better, and in far greater detail than those without the condition.[

Sound → color synesthesia

Sound → color synesthesia, or chromesthesia is “something like fireworks”: voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and firework shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound ends

Individuals rarely agree on what color a given sound is (composers Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov famously disagreed on the colors of music keys); however, synesthetes show the same trends as non-synesthetes do. For example, both groups say that loud tones are brighter than soft tones, and that lower tones are darker than higher tones. Synaesthetes nevertheless choose more precise colors than non-synesthetes and are more consistent in their choice of colors given a set of sounds of varying pitch, timbre and composition

Personification

Ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP, or personification for short) is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, days, months and letters are associated with personalities. Although this form of synesthesia was documented as early as the 1890s modern research has, until recently, paid little attention.

For some people objects are also sometimes imbued with a sense of personality.

Lexical → gustatory synesthesia

In the rare lexical → gustatory synesthesia, individual words and the sounds of spoken language evoke taste sensations in the mouth. According to James Wannerton, “Whenever I hear, read, or articulate (inner speech) words or word sounds, I experience an immediate and involuntary taste sensation on my tongue. These very specific taste associations never change and have remained the same for as long as I can remember.”

More a part of our culture than one may realize, sayings like “loud Shirt,” “Bitter Wind,” “Prickly Laugh,” “Green with Envy,” all have their roots in synesthesia while some notable Synesthetes include David Hockney, Billy Joel, Itzhak Perlman, Duke Ellington and maybe even you.

Brad M Bucklin

Brad M. Bucklin received a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Theatre from Windham College where he studied with John Irving. After moving to Los Angeles at 25, he worked as an actor for a number of years on such shows as “One Day At A Time,” “Days of Our Lives” “Picket Fences” and in films that included “World War III,” “Wavelength” “No Place to Hide” and more. Brad was a Partner at the Empty Stage Theatre, where he co-wrote and produced the play “Three,” featuring Felicia Day and turned into the hilarious screenplay “Sex and the Modern Marriage.” His plays “Remember Me,”"Abide," and more have all been produced in Los Angeles area. He directed the original one act “Twins” (featuring Kristin Wigg) for the Award Winning Can Festival. His play “Mrs. Christmas” was recently made into an Award Winning short film directed by Kristian Gabriel. He was Production Manager on the documentary “Supporting Actors,” and wrote, Produced and Directed the short film “Remember Marci.” Currently he is working on a Documentary about Improv that includes many performers such as Lisa Kudrow and Cynthia Stevenson. Brad has partnered with Kristian Gabriel to create Professional Filmmaking Alliance, and www.crypticplanet.com. www.bradbucklin.com